Great two day trip to Mt. Assiniboine which was in perfect conditions on Sept. 22, 2012. Vern D. and I (Kevin B.) approached from the BC side via Assiniboine Creek and Lake to the Assiniboine/Strom Col. Made this col in 5 hours, dropped the packs and walked to the summit of Mt. Strom, simple walk with great views. Spent Friday night at the Hind Hut; had the whole place to ourselves.

We left the hut at 6am and the temperature was +8. We had great scrambling with dry conditions; we scrambled the full North Ridge route without using the rope. We had prefect conditions, there was the odd small patch of snow/ice, but all easy to avoid.

We made the summit in 4 hours. No wind and a summit temperature of +12. We spent nearly an hour enjoying the summit and descended the SW slopes, on route to Lunette Peak. Took us 4 hours to reach the summit of Lunette Peak from the summit of Assiniboine. The SW face of Assiniboine is a nightmare; crazy loose, very exposed and just plain miserable. From the Lunette/Assiniboine Col scramble up Lunette was better quality rock, easy/moderate ledges were choss, but the steeper rock bands were pretty solid, all scrambled no gear or rope used.

Descent to Lunette Lake was a pain, took about 4 hours from summit to reach tree line, but lots of cliff bands above lake were tiring to traverse around, about 8 hours from Lunette summit to truck.

Wanting to avoid the circus like atmosphere of the Canmore/helicopter approach to Assiniboine this time, I found Dow's excellent description of the BC approach here on SP so we decided to give it a go. We car camped at the creek below the take-off spot and took off around 7:00 AM for Assiniboine Lake. The first small creek crossing wasn't too bad but the log crossing was a bit humbling, especially on the way out when the water had risen at least a foot. The hike up to the glacier crossing looked worse than it actually was and the glacier was still completely covered so we crossed it unroped. The hike up to the Strom/Assiniboine Col was very loose but relatively short. As it turned out, we were the first party in the Hind Hut for the 2007 climbing season. The route was dry top to bottom so we climbed the route solo with the exception of the 50' pitch up the grey band. We descended by way of the South Face route which was technically easier than the North Ridge but much more interesting in terms of route finding. We had 2 days of perfect weather but 10 minutes after we reached the car a thunderstorm cut loose and it rained off and on for the next five days.